Pages

MTV Only sees Premarital ‘Sex’ as a Problem With Young Girls

I’m making the general assumption that some of my older readers aren’t aware of this television show on MTV called “Sex With Mom and Dad.” I don’t know if any other bloggers have attacked the show from this angle, so if they have, I apologize for the upcoming redundancy….oh well. But, usually when I watch television, even a movie, I look for a character that often times I can identify with. If that doesn’t happen usually the movie or show has to appeal to me through other rhetorical and stylistic formulas such as comedy, drama, horror or some kind of action. If I can’t identify on those levels, well then I think the movie just simply wasn’t created for someone in my demographic–the movie Fargo is a case in point. Flat out, I think the movie was one of the dumbest movies ever produced. I watched it more than once and just couldn’t find any remote access point from which to understand it.

“Sex…With Mom and Dad” is an entirely different animal all together.

They had a few black families on there, and generally that’s enough for me to watch and be engaged on some level, even if it is remote. But, what I noticed was that it was more daughters and their parent(s) who were being featured on the show.

Dr. Drew

For those of you still in the dark, the premise of the show is for a family therapist (psychologist?) named Dr. Drew to help facilitate the sex conversation between teenage children and their parents and to move past the “Don’t do it” from the parents and the “EWWWWW!” factor with the children. I definitely think it’s breakthrough enough in the realm that the parents are asked to be honest with their children about their own sex life prior at their children’s age.

But, in the few shows that I watched they were with the daughters and, of course, it was always the father wanting to protect “Daddy’s little girl” which of course flies in the face of conventional wisdom that usually portrays Daddy as being a dog back when he was 15, 16 and 17. Well, that conventional wisdom is kept at bay because out of the five or more shows I’ve watched and seen advertised for, there are only young girls who are at the center of attention when it comes to being cared for about sexually.

Shalimar, 17

This one episode I just watched earlier this week featured a young girl named Shalimar who at one point in the show had three young men she had previously dealt with sexually come to dinner with her parents, aged 18, 19 and 20. One of whom, the young boy asked her to go half on a baby with. So when asked by a random ice-breaker question by the therapist via a notecard left at the house, “How good was the sex?” the young man replied he didn’t remember.

STOP. REWIND, PRESS PLAY.

Homeboy didn’t remember?!?!?!?

By that time I realised that there was as much of an issue of young men having random sex than there was with the young women, if not more so on the basis of men can do the do and not have to worry about pregnancies! And if that shock wasn’t enough, this same 18 year old when asked what would he do if he and the young girl had gotten pregnant just simply kept his mouth shut and looked dumbfounded. My shock was further compounded when the 20 year old implied that he would want her to get an abortion; or at the very least that he was not interested in raising a baby.

Now, I’m sure y’all know where I stand on this whole pre-marital sex thing as far as the church is concerned–WHO CARES!!!!!!

I think I’m going to work in tandem with a friend on campus developing a theology on biblical conjecture* because clearly that’s one person’s opinion that’s minimally 2,000 years old. I’m quite sure we wouldn’t take medical advice from a doctor back then, why take sexual advice from someone back then….

Anywayz…

What I do believe is that teenagers SHOULD and MUST practice SAFE sex at all times. There’s no need for someone getting pregnant so early and not being able to take care of the child. I think absentee fathers, daddies (whatever they being called this week) is a mess and half and needs to stop. I think the larger community needs to put some damn condoms out next to the metal detectors in high school and needs to set a condom bowl somewhere in the youth room in the churches. And since we’re on the subject, I’m pro-choice. Whether one believes life starts at conception or not, reality states that people have abortions regardless if its legal or not. Seeing as how I’ve had friends who’ve had abortions (yes, that’s plural) I would have much rather her been able to go to a doctor and have the abortion done rather than some random doctors office in an abandoned building.

Hmm, wonder what comments and strings of random biblical conjecture scripture I’m going to get about this post already. I actually didn’t meant to write all that, because it’s off topic, but I’m glad I did.

Back to the topic at hand…

I’m actually disgusted at the sexualization of the young women that MTV has chosen to display on this show. I’ll say from the outset that perhaps young male teenagers didn’t sign up to be the center of attention in relation to their sex life with their parents, so I take that into consideration. However, the show comes off as though these young women are forced to be the sexual governors in the relationships that they have while the young men are portrayed as the dogs.

The three young men who Shalimar had had sex with. R-L 18 year old, 20 year old and 19 year old

In Shalimar’s case, Oh GAAAAAWD, I just wonder what life lessons did those three young men learn: that being with a hot chick got me a spot on MTV?!?!?!? I’m quite sure their phones have been blowing up with text messages and random phone calls and random Facebook and MySpace messages since their appearances. I doubt highly that MTV saw to it that those young men received sexual counseling sessions on how to practice safe sex as they continued to mature.

I’m also questioning just how does it portray the father to boyfriend dynamic, granted it’s television, but always seems to fly in the face of “lockerroom” talk that is the norm with teenage males irrespective of race and culture. Particularly in Westernized culture: we love our sons and raise our daughters–that’s not something that’s only individual to the black community. We set up this double standard when raising our sons that’s its okay to do all this “sowing of the wild oats” but then we for some reason act a fool if a girl ends up pregnant. And then have the nerve to weirdly pat the son on the back if he get’s a girl pregnant.

We have equated manhood with sexual prowess in this society, but only in a patrilineal fashion; the same does NOT hold water for father-daughter relationships. In certain sub-communities in cross-cultural exchanges, one would find that the rumor of being homosexual is uttered if by 15 or 16 a young man is still a virgin and perhaps even by my age at 24 because I’m not married, something must be wrong with me.

This system of pathology is painfully evident in our society. It is the mindset that gets passed down tacitly and unsaid from generation to generation. The elders of our society sit back in the rocking chairs of antiquity and mutter “Where did I go wrong?” and the middle generation fails to return the question of “Elder, how do we change with the times?” The youth in fact get taught antiquated ideals that may have worked for a time when the internet and Facebook didn’t exist, but since sex is only one click away, why are still trying to give advice for a world where only a party line existed in the general store half a mile away when the current reality is already instant messenging and googling the directions to their next hook-up?

I’m not sure if today’s sexual realm is a response to yesterdays anachronisms or a result of them. I’m open to hear thoughts on that. My response to the sexualization of society comes from a pragmatic approach: I’m pro-life on all accounts, not just when it comes to abortion, but when it comes to preserving the life of us–folks are dying out on the streets from preventable sexually transmitted diseases. Honestly, I’d take a St. Augustine approach mixed with Luther if it weren’t for STD’s: St. Augustine the FAAAAATHER of the Church said “Lord make me chaste…but not yet.”

E b b a shah-no mah!

But, I think Luther put it best when he simply stated, “Sin boldly!”

I mean, if you gon do it, have fun while you doing it. Aint no such thing as half doing it, I mean, enjoy it. However in the face of HIV/AIDS rates still going up and folks still being silent on the issue even in the face of gruesome statistics, I think something needs to be done. I still give kudos to MTV for doing such a show (although it weirdly follows the “Parental Control” show which in itself is an affront to parents across the world and the boyfriend/girlfriend relationships of said parents) because I think if children find their parents more “user friendly” perhaps there may be a shift. I just wish that society would take care of their boys just as much as the girls.

Yeah, I said a mouthful in this post, so feel free to leave comments. I just really wonder how many church folk are going to read this and then read me up and down with Scriptures because of my stance on abortion and pre-marital sex.

As much as we’d like to flatter ourselves that teen sex is a ‘new’ problem, it’s been around for millennium. Humans are reproductively fit and have a strong sexual appetite by mid-teens. Makes sense from a breeding standpoint since historically most were dead before the age of 40.

Here in the US, marriages commonly took place when people were adolescents or early 20s, right through the agrarian/agricultural phase here in the US. As we shifted to the industrial and then post-industrial stage, needs of labor changed. Young people were and still are warehoused in longer education settings and legal adulthood has been delayed. Their biology, however, has not changed. There lies the root of the problem.

Fighting Mother Nature has been a tough battle for advanced civilization to win. Telling teens what they should or should not do runs contrary to what their bodies tell them… it’s like telling someone they shouldn’t be hungry but they are. Many forms of entertainment only stimulates their appetite.

It takes a lot of effort and clever PR, ie education re: pregnancy, STDs, losing a chance to graduate or go to college, a biblical perspective, etc., to convince them to wait or to be more cautious. In the end, Mother Nature still wins too often. Even the older generation of middle class had more than their share of sudden engagements and quick marriages to avoid the embarrassment or stigma of an out of wedlock child.

This is why this isn’t a unique time we live in, despite what MTV says. In the end, there is nothing new under the sun, especially when it comes to sex and procreation.

This is an EXCELLENT post. I’ve written about my similar struggles with double standards for men concerning virginity and marriage. I’m 24 as well and girls ain’t done nothing to me or for me, but look down on me. It really sucks to be a “rookie” in the bedroom, but it’s God’s will.

There are some men who are meant to be single. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to be a fondling priest. Oh no. That just means that I have to accept God’s will and find love when I can get it.

It’s not really about height, looks, money or social status. It’s about luck. I’m just not lucky when it comes to women. And women don’t know what they want in a man anyway. But premarital sex IS a problem for them because they do the choosing. It’s not like women have to beg as many men for sex as the men beg women. Women are usually more superficial and likely to find 1 in 10 men attractive. On the converse, men might only find 1 in 10 women unattractive.

Mother Nature could care less what we think works or doesn’t work. She cares about one thing only: reproduce or become extinct. This is the mandate of ever species, and this was my point.

And when you say “we”, you ain’t talking about two hot in the pants 16 year olds somewhere, getting it on as I write this. They are in the equivalent of being in heat, despite a lot of them having had robust parenting and sex eduction since 6th grade or earlier.

Chasity belts were first tried nearly 1,000 years ago. The problem of teen sexuality or adultery plagued them long before then, and keep in mind that they didn’t have MTV.

The closest thing we have to a barrier now between egg and sperm is the condom. People still don’t use them consistently or at all, fully knowing the risks of catching STDs or an ill-timed or unwanted pregnancy.

There are strategies that have reduced the problem in various countries and here – namely, a marriage revolution which you said you’re calling for.

This was standard practice – for teens – until the last 70+ years and I think I mentioned that in my previous comment. I think it’s possible this could happen again in your lifetime, but a number of variables that dramatically impact the American lifestyle would have to be in place, the central one being national poverty so dire that we will have returned to the Dark Ages.